At the beginning of last week I got a new shipment of books. Reading and I have a strange relationship. I love reading, but not only do I have a hard time attributing something so fun to something I need to do for my writing career (and thus make time for it), but when I read a book, I am generally obsessed with finishing it to the detriment of all else.
As such, I have actually avoided reading in the past, because it ‘distracts’ me from writing. Now that is silly, because in order to become a better writer, I need to read. I managed to convince myself of that enough that I read four of the five books already. (I have reviews written that will go up in the next few weeks.) However, this did cut into my writing time so while I progressed with the Huntsman, it was less than I usually do.
That brings me to my next topic. During April (Which started yesterday for you reading this, but I am writing this on March 31.), I am taking part in Camp NaNoWriMo for the first time. I was a rather religious participate of NaNoWriMo (the original) until this past year when I was in the middle of a writing project I couldn’t put off. As such I didn’t get my NaNoWriMo fix for the year and since a friend set up a cabin, I thought it might be fun to give this a try.
Unlike NaNoWriMo, Camp NaNoWriMo allows you to set your own goal and then attempt to accomplish it during the month of April. (And it can be counted in word, hours, minutes, lines, or pages.) Now I’ve been playing around with the ‘rules’ of NaNoWriMo for years. And while I always hit what I consider the ‘main’ rule (the words I authenticate are written in the month of November), the idea of giving myself my own goals is not outside of my comfort zone.
Two years ago when I had just started the Huntsman, and I gave myself the lofty goal of 90k words for NaNoWriMo. My expectation was to burn through the rough draft like I had The Law of the Prince Charming two years before that. I failed.
But of course that didn’t mean I gave up. It just took me two years to come to grips with the fact that this book won’t be as quick and easy as the first one, and that there’s nothing wrong with that. At the same time, I want to push forward this dreaded ‘muddle in the middle’ that I always have trouble with.
So I’m going to use Camp NaNoWriMo to help with that. I’ve been wibbling back and forth about what kind of goal to give myself. I’m not sure I can realistically expect to make 50k words since my weekends are spoken for all month. So I’m going to go with 20k words which is less than 700 words a day, and hopefully a number I can keep up since there will be days where I simply can’t write.
I spent part of this morning writing out a list of scenes I need to write, so hopefully I’ll just be able to bang those out. Either way, I’ll have more words written by the end of the month than I have now.
I am also participating in #WIPjoy again. Those posts will be going up on my Facebook and Twitter feeds starting today, so you’ll get some more tidbits about the Huntsman if you’re so inclined.
And this month brings the last four parts of The Aesir-Vanir War short story that has been going since the beginning of March.
It’s going to be a productive month whether I like it or not.
